NOLA Tapes: It Ain't the Same No Mo

Mobo Click & Da Grace DJs present
Marvelous & Peaches Wobble on Dat Stick
(1999, Mobo) cassette rip -> 320 kbps

Posting a lot of Mobo releases coming up (including the label's first release). This short EP is fairly pure bounce in the sense that it obeys more rules than it breaks. Strong Female vox except when they are weak and per usual, I like the weed anthem (the first one). Although I don't like the cover artwork, I do like the name of the designers - Blue Dog Graphics.

Interested in whatever paraphernalia accompanies Becoming A Mobo Soldier by way of a 3x5 postcard mailed to the Mobo Soldier PO box. Did anything ever come out by the P-Cola click? This blog is like an arcade magic 8-ball. I drop money in (in the form of mp3 archives) and ask questions.

NOLA Tapes: Da Rangaz

Da Rangaz All Night Flightaz
(1999, Last Chance Records) cassette rip -> 320 kbps

Production by Kenneth "DJ Chicken" Williams & Terrance "T-Bone" Johnson, shout-outs by Wild Wayne. Excellent a capella weedhead skit, stranger telephone comedy on "Buncha Bitches". Good, hype bounce on the title track and "Score It, Roll It". Very Brown beats throughout. Actually, "Get Wild With It" sounds like a Bounce adaptation of a Ying Yang riff, and "All Night Flightaz" is built around a similar two-note piano line to "Fuck the Ying Yang Twins". I'm not trying to say this connection means much, just that I saw it.

NOLA Tapes: The Wickie Wickie

South Coast Shorty The Hot Girl
(1997, South Coast) cassette rip -> 320 kbps

I realize T&G has been full of empty promises of late, but this time I'm shouting "We're Back!" and meaning it. The good news is that at the breaking point where most blogs like this die, this one just paused.

The first in a line of many: South Coast Shorty aka Trinice Ricks. As fond as I am of P&P style photoshop composites, I think I might prefer an alternate reality where colored pencil fantasy art like this drawing by Jay "Genisis" Alexander (who must've done the Southern Raw Females comp art) blew up in the same way. But to each his own - you can find this cover included on this list of Worst Rap Covers along with all my other favorite record covers. www.thug.com is a fucking masterpiece of a cover and in my dreams I'm blogging this on Thugscape Navigator.

I've heard that bird chirp siren sound from 'From the Back" in a Jubilee track before. What is that thing? Lots of sort-of 1980s hyper-melodic synth lines that it seems like only became popular a few years ago when mainstream rap turned so overtly pop.

Nows a good time for re-up requests, btw.

Highlights: "Represent", "Hott Girl", "Gots' No Time (Wickie Wickie)"

Just caught this on MTV jams. I think the sample is a live version of "My Juvie" by Magnolia Shorty. Surprised to hear such a raw New Orleans sample be the backbone.

Bounce By Bounces Best

Looks like yall heard about this and its a definite come-thru, but let me repeat it once again just incase you have disposable income, you can see on the fundraiser page they still need more, so...

A handful, well more than you can fit in your hand, of Bounce's brightest are headed to the most unlikely of industry showcases, SxSW, so long as you can lend a small bit of support. They are almost at the happen-point so please push them to the limit.

It will be a great opportunity for one of the country's most region-specific art forms to reach outside and give some lame, ambitious indie-rockers a run for their money. It will also be a great opportunity to watch Acid Mothers Temple watching DJ Jubilee.

Random Junts

T&G just relocated to Los Angeles, so much on my plate its hard to stay blog-active, buts thats all for the better, really. Still, I'd like to feed yall little bits of something if for no other reason then to encourage these Japan spambots to keep screaming their nonsense at me. This blog has always been dependent on my record purchases, a fetishist's diary, I suppose. But purchasing has come to a standstill in the face of deliberate unemployment.

So this has slowed me down, but it hasn't stopped me completely. Its still the future, its after the aughts even, and luckily I don't need funds to obsessively consume. I was in Atlanta recently and accomplished some aggressive duping. Track by track, here are some of the fruits. Hopefully, most of these are new to you, new to the internet.

"Crooked I Anthem" Ridaz - Profitt f/ C-Loc: I love the pressing, intense vibe the strings add to this track's ascending second-line style bassline, Naptown (Indianapolis) meets Baton Rouge

"Get Buck" - Play Cuzins: actually, what I said about the Profitt track applies again here. Similar tracks, I guess, more double-time hihats, solemn harmonies, threatening lyrics

"Polo Club" - Money Marc & Roposul (from Players Only Live Once, 2001) cool Memphis cassette vibe to this track, not sure if that's where these two are from

"Ballas, Pimps, Gangstas" - Forever Lawless: you might not appreciate the late 20th century Cash Money style here but I used to bump this track around that time and I'm glad as hell to have a copy again. Video is on display here.

"Georgia Bounce" - NPC: GA group serves up a fairly straight-forward DJ Jubilee-inspired junt

"Ghetto Bounce (inst)" - Moochie Mack (from Broke Pimpin, 2001): I haven't even heard the voc mix but, then again, I don't really need to. I'd like to make a film with this as the main theme

"My Brougham" - MC Fresh (from 12" on Boomtown): bumping bootyshake Fleetwood fetish

"Whoomp, There It Is" - Pimp Team: possibly the original sissy rapper, pretty straight forward parody of "Whoomp" where the "it" thats there is the "Almighty Club" (beware)

"Who Let Them Dogs Loose" - MC Mack & Kamikaze: admittedly, not that much to it, but I can't resist the "Iron Man" bass melody

Did I mention? More than one Memphis mix in the established Twankle Tape form coming soon in digital and cassette formats!

On Vacation

Enjoy this brief SMK footage until I return...

Sissy vs Sega

This was the youtube video that got me into youtube videos. And I bring that up now because it also got me into DJ Sega, the man behind this balls-out rmx of "Tell me when to go", and this motherfucker just unleashed a masterful remix of Sissy Nobby's "Lay Me Down". Its a rare occasion that I chime in on the present but this seems like the first decent intersection between 2 obviously compatible aesthetics.

And to think this will be on actual wax with a Bitch Ass Darius remix as well..

Memphistory

Three more early Memphis classics, all gleaned from elsewhere, where elsewhere is the linklist anonymously served up in the comments to this former post. I'd grabbed a version of the Gangsta Pat & Legion of Doome .rar a while back (Shootin on Narcs Pt. II) but it was fun to revisit today. Fake female bass fetish in the model of "Bitches Reply", kind of sounds like if Ween did a better job at themselves. Hilarious, explicit gender fantasy.

The other two tracks are new to me today, so I've been able to enjoy them on repeat. Both seem to share a lot of qualities with the emerging raps of other southern regions around the same time. LDOG's offering sports the most eccentric production of the three. Geto Boys / Ganksta N-I-P style brutality with unique samples and the sort of synth bass line we've already seen from contemporaneous cuts (M-Team, Men of the Hour, Radical T, SMK aka KMSM) which evolved (through measure of stylistic restraint) into the harder backbones of early Ball & G joints. Meanwhile, the drums share some essential qualities of flow with the Famous Lowdown Boys single from New Orleans and every reader here should be begging Noz to post that on his site because he is the only motherfucker who has that record. I wouldn't sleep on the other two LDOG tracks that came with this either, so yall follow my tracks, or, I mean, follow the tracks I followed. Other people's feet. And someone wise from the Memphis area, fill in the acronym. Who is L.D.O.G.? Why does the intro say "Chicago City"?

And then BRRRRR, Icy K raps clean for the radio. Poster / homie Thug Doubt placed this as a response to the "no rap" commercial radio campaign of the time. Similar themes explored on the other side to this single, "My Kind of Music".

No Limit Outsourcing

DJ Jelly & MC Assault

Roll Wit Us or Git Rolled Over!!

or

Get Rolled Over

(199?, Tape Godz?)

cassette -> 320 mp3

[side A, side B]

I've had plans for sometime to make a No Limit mix and I did, months ago, dig in deeper to the NL discog than I ought to have because weeding-out is a tough task in a yard with so many weeds. After time, one Uhhh out of P and I was nauseous.

But still committed, even as T&G becomes more and more a blur of the past. Which is why it was a profound relief to me to happen upon this Nineteen Ninety-Something underground Oomp Tape for a couple of dollars at Ann Arbor's always excellent Encore Records. Not just because my favorite NL tracks are on here, compiled - but also because Jelly's collagist mixing turns the raw stuff of the tank into something more distinctly like art. Or at least something more distinctly like good music.

This tape really supports an Omar-S philosophy of Yeah bitch, that’s all the record do... your lazy ass needs to do some other shit with it... except where that idea grows out of the minimalism of Omar's shit, it works just as well with the dryness of the No Limit catalogue. There was too much talent on both the MC and production side of their roster to not create some great things, but the centrality of economics to their whole operation had to muddy the successes. And the main misstep, aesthetically, (besides the spawning of rap careers that never should have spawned, like Silkk) was the move away from the murky legal territory of sampling and as a result, DJing, its father art-form. And like that, the Southern Style DJs inject the life right back into the shit.

There was a really great Jelly interview in a Murderdog from around 99, maybe 2000. I had plans to and even started transcribing it, but it seemed MD was going fully on the archives. And though that hasn't yet materialized, and even the opposite appears to be true where old interviews that used to be hosted there are now missing, this is still a great time to mention that the magazine is now fully available for free in digital edition, which looks great and is not rounded down in any way. But this issue had an extensive Atlanta feature and everyone had the same thing to express, which was the felt impact of the Tank. How it changed the streets, the sounds, the industry.

And in a way their greatest offering was their impact, not their content, which is why its a true pleasure to have this object, which serves up their content through the lens of their impact. The experience of No Limit from a DJ (group of DJs, really), who loved this music, felt its impact, got off their lazy ass and did some other shit with it.

Notes: Look out for the end of side A, goes into some surely unintended skipping during the weird mixing of Teena Marie's "Out on a Limb" and space sounds and home-recorded smoke/choke cadillac/dank anthems. Also, I want to mention that one of the questions I really wrestled with when trying to do this on my own was how prominently to feature Snoop. The Oomp answer here is "prominently". Also, you can check the tracklist in the JPEG, but it doesn't have much to offer in the way of truth value. Wonder if he still has that northeast Georgia phone number.

Bring Your "A" Game, Spread the News

...Romeo is back. Have yall heard this? I haven't heard this. Recent or recent enough solo track from G-Style's Romeo. Its confusing enough that G-Style's only or just only known release was a single called Romeo. Anyways, this video's been up for a couple of years and it definitely does not have a couple years worth of views. The track's guitar-heavy production is a somewhat of a turn-off for me but this guy is credited for bringing the gangsta-walk to Memphis so its interesting to seem him take it all in, bring it all back. Still, slack cut for being involved in the best classic gangsta walking footage around.

The Beat Goes On

Big Mike Nawlins Phats
(2005, Blackstone) @ 320

Today I left my parents Grand Rapids, Michigan home to check The Beat Goes On, a record store in the middle of a (seemingly indefinite) going-out-of-business sale. I had first gone there four or five years ago on a blunt-fueled search for rap music in the city with DJ Prettyboi and was surprised to find discs like Al Kapone's Memphis Drama Vol 2 and Gangsta Pat albums from the early aughts. Most of it was too expensive to buy though (16.99+) so we walked out with some questionable no-name mixes with cracked cases. We were hunting for vinyl anyways, and they didn't have much to offer. Still, ripping off their Three 6 Mafia 12 x 12 promo posters was the closest we came to success outside of the smoke-filled car.

This year, I knew the store was going to offer me my only opportunity to cop some Twankle worthy bounty for yall. And the idea of irreversibility, of being located presently in a past one cannot return to, was enough for me to disobey the Buy No Records maxim imposed on this blog author ever since I decided to quit my job last summer.

Anyways, I got there. I leafed through the racks. My fingers felt the feeling of leafing, the memory of leafing, my eyes tightened to spy the diamonds in so much crap. For a while I lapsed into an obsessive state that lack of funds had temporarily shut down. Whenever I found something half-decent or even most-likely-less-than-half-decent-but-still-curiosity-sparking (like post tank Mr. Sev-on), I ran a cost-benefit analysis, applying the 25% of New, 40% of Used sale rules to the inflated tag price and weighing that against the value of listening twice, uploading, alphabetizing, storing, moving, case-breaking, case-replacing. Jewel cases crunch like the shells of cicadas. At least in the apartments I live in.

Meanwhile, some guy, as tall and white and lanky as I am, stood behind a camera and gave the store owner tips about how to perform in some in-progress video interview. "We're just talking, the camera isn't on". I couldn't tell if they were filming a public access commercial or this kid's undergraduate media studies homework. They spoke about the internet in a hilarious and alienated way that reminded me of my parents' facebook statuses and the smiley faces my dad inappropriately punctuates emails with. They talked about how vinyl has some value, some irreplaceability that "an itunes" doesn't. And this place, unlike the internet, has vinyl. Its in boxes on the floor and I already know better than to look there.

"What do you think has hurt you worse, the iTunes or the stealing, the Nero, the filesharing?"

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out what is the most filesharable. My fingers have sifted through many good discs that I don't have, the Triple 6 Vol. 2 reissue, On the Outside Looking In, Chopper City. Stuff I have but don't have, stuff I know inside out. Laughing because I'm looking to buy something from this gentleman, but only so I can give it away. Sighing because if the right deal presented itself I would take loads off this guy. I would gut him, clean him out. There are things these sifting fingers can't resist. These Wicked Streets for 3 dollars. Buy 10 get 10 free. But the shift from 18 dollars to 13 doesn't do it. Should I tell him?

There are two other people in the store. One man is like a pint-sized bouncer. His red eyes meet mine every time I look towards him. I suspect he is like the Best Buy greeter. Maybe he's just one more of Michigan's long-term unemployed, looking for the feeling of work even without its traditional reward. The other is a woman, 30s, crutches. She keeps blocking the aisle.

There are stacks of CDs on top of the CDs. They all start falling down. The owner comes over and gives them a hard tap. "They were fine before people started mixing them up," he says. I'm not sure what he means, I can't dig without shifting them around. I continue to mix up his CDs.

I'm looking through 20 dollar DVDs. Luke video compilations, extended C-Murder advertisements, Adventures in Hollyhood. I want to absorb all the crap, find the crap's diamonds and share them with people lazier or less obsessed than myself. But the hunt is hopeless. I can't use more cracking shells and I wonder if this place ever moved good used records even before there was such a thing as an Ebay vulture.

I bought this excellent Big Mike record for the small advance in fidelity and another no-name mix with a cracked case, Best of DJ Melo-Mix Part 2. As I walked up to the counter the owner was answering another question.

"This is all I've been doing for 30 years. Ever since I was 18."

"No," he says, "I haven't thought about what I'll do next."

Time to make plans, I thought.

Buckle Up G

Lo Key Test My Nutz
(199?, Street Smart?)
cassette rip @ 320

Lo Key, cousin of Tommy Wright, of the Willett Click, South Memphis.

Is this Lo Key or 2 Lo Key? And if its the former (and I think it is) then how accurate are my track names, pulled from a site that used the latter? Questions from the fog. The title track of this cassette made its debut on this blog here, where I (mis?)attributed it to Lil Noid.

Boring uncertainties yall could give shits about. This one is excellent, the evil dream psychedelic vibe, warm tape-echoed vox, simultaneously psychopathic, apathetic, brooding. Dislocated funk, sativa paranoia.

New Ground Covered

Lil Watts Whatcha Talkin Bout
(199?, Set-4 Life)
cassette rip @ 320

Spam comments are eating away at this blog. Does that mean it has in some way died? If so the Twankle Zombie is still going to, at the very least, upload these Street Smart internet distro clones.

Three of these tapes, so I'll start with the weakest. Not from Memphis proper, but nearby Tunica, MS, which I'm happy to say stretches the unfairly confined regional focus of this spotty blog. I've kindly spared you the 40 minutes of silence resulting from TW3 using the wrong length tape. But hey, whatever gets the package off the couch.

"Smoke One" is the highlight for me and its possible I'm easy to please in this regard. Tommy raps on the side B opener, "Robbery", listen to that one, assuming yall listen to what you download.

My parents have a beast of an internet connection. Its unfortunate that my records are in a storage space in South San Francisco, I could blaze through ripping here. And someone with more patience, more poise than myself should try to cop the Lil Tino cassette from the Ebay store and share its contents. I vote for poster Rob to take this task up.